Wouldn’t you know it!

What do you think was the first meal I got in The cafeteria when We had our first meeting? Buckwheat! Oh yuck! Be that as it may, let me tell you all about Constituion Day. This is an official holiday in Tatarstan, so it was a non-working day for must people, but stores were open. I went to the Metro station at about 12:30 because I was going to meet Anna at 1 for lunch. Hmmmmm, strange. The train is leaving from the OTHER side of the platform. AND, when it arrives at the station, there are already people inside. Does that mean...? Could it be....? Did the new station open in time for Constitution Day? I’m thinking to myself that when I come back out of the city I will have to explore the situation and find out. I met Anna at our usual place and decided to go that that great Georgian restaurant where the serve the dough boat filled with great cheese and raw egg. That stuff just melts in your mouth. On the way there, I noticed that they’ve opened a new tourist office right next to the subway station in the pedestrian zone. What a great idea. The other one was so far away from everything, it surprised me that anyone found it. I’m sure this had a lot to do with the fact that Kazan hosted a lot of World Cup matches. Speaking of World Cup matches, Anna was telling me it was a really crazy time here when all the foreign fans were here to watch the games. She met so many foreigners and she said taxi drivers were stopping on the street, getting out of their cars and yelling, “Does anyone speak English? I don’t understand where these people want to go!” And I’m sure a lot of the street improvements were with the World Cup in mind. So, after eating at Hinkalnaya, the Georgian restaurant, we walked it off by strolling around Lake Kazan. The lake had been fenced off for the whole time I was here because they were making improvements to the shoreline. And the improvements are spectacular. There are lots of boardwalks, there is little water play park for the kids, the restaurants have been renovated and, because it was Constitution Day, there were live concerts all over the place. After walking around for awhile and wading through large crowds of people who were enjoying the day, we headed back to Beanheart’s Cafe for a cup of tea. Then she had to get going because she was flying back to her town that evening and I was going to go meat my director to talk about my class. Yes, she conducts business, even on holidays. The director wanted to meet me at a place near Lake Kaban so I walked and back and we sat for a long time in a Tatar cafe, discussed the school and munched on Tatar pastries. We sat there for ages and the. She told me about the fireworks and concerts at the Kremlin in the evening and I should come along. So we met here husband and the kids, got a taxi (with the parents holding the littlest one’s tricycle on their laps in the back seat, along with the two kids) and took off for the Kremlin. There were several concert stages and there was one very good concert by a young Tatar band which was almost a protest group. I didn’t understand it all but I certainly got the gist of it. Meanwhile the director is running into a million people she knows, plus lots of people from school. She texted Matthew and he took a taxi and met us there in time for the fireworks. To get a good view of them, we had to walk from the Kremlin to the promenade on the Kazanka with about 1,000,000 other people. We find a good place to see them from ,however, and we had a tremendous view of 15 minutes of fireworks. By this time, Matthew and I decided we should take the subway back and see what the new station was like. We followed maybe 100,000 back to the subway station while 750,000 people tried to drive their cars out of the convoluted traffic mess. I didn’t know that traffic moves faster if you blow your horn constantly! We got to the subway station at the Kremlin and would you believe, the station doors were closed and blocked by the police. Although hundreds of people were waiting patiently to get in. We decided we weren’t going to be among them, so we walked farther and got a taxi. It’s definitely not the last opportunity I will have to ride to the new station. Boy, did I sleep well when I got home. This morning I got up and went to prepare some projects for next week. Then I had a couple of conferences, had to meet some parents of new students, and visited the kids in my class. I read a book, played with the toy animals and tried to answer the parents’ questions. I can’t wait until the excitements over and things calm down a little bit. In other news of the week, the director had told me about a nice little cafe and grocery store about mile down my street in the other direction. Wednesday I thought I would try to find it. The new sidewalk went pretty far but eventually degenerated into a dirt path through a field of thistles. And I only had to ask directions once. But I find it. It was a nice little place with some fresh veggies as well. But I just bought myself a croissant to go and came on back home. And this is off the subject, but my class’s schedule says they now eat supper at 5 instead of shortly after 4. And since I leave at 4:30, it means I only have to buckwheat maybe twice a week! Oh, yes!